This workshop is designed to help you enlarge your photograph to large digital prints. This class focuses exclusively making large-format prints while refining your fine-art digital printing using our first-class Digital Lab, primarily using digital inkjet printers. Concentration will be on inkjet printing with color pigments and black/gray ink combinations on coated and rag papers working with Steve again to continue your printing progress.

We will cover workflow issues, interpolation and sharpening issues, color management, correcting color casts, adjustment layers, custom profile generation, editing and inspection. There being no magic bullet to making good prints, the workshop will also explore old fashioned testing, careful color judgments and interactive honing in on the best print possible.

Discussions will also include an exploration of print aesthetics in the digital age - what makes for a beautiful print? - do the new possibilities enhance our notion of what photography can be? - are we merely trying to imitate traditional photographic processes? Papers and their printing problems and advantages will be weighed, as well as their visual qualities.

Workshop Workings

You bring your photographic files. We help you learn about the details of enlargement and digital printing, then we help you make prints that reflect your visual aspirations. We'll supply the computers, printers, viewing light and some awesome teaching with the conceptual hurdles of color management, color balance and B&W tonal control left in the dust of former lack of confidence and understanding. These two days will make a difference in your printing.

The size of your prints that will still look good is directly related to the quality, resolution and detail demands of your original capture and subject matter. This class is not about miraculous blow-ups from low resolution files, but a deep exploration of what is possible, reasonable and good looking.

There will be no lab fee for testing, but the large prints will be billed at a cost per square inch of of the ink and paper. We will stock Hahnemühle Museum Etching and PhotoRag Pearl. Arrangements can be made to bring your own paper and adjust ink costs. You are also welcome to make paper profiles for your own papers during the workshop, but it will eat into your printing time. 50 inch wide prints will be our functional limit because of print times involved. Very long panoramics are not practical to print during class time.

This workshop will expand our workshop program's exploration of photography's evolution into a digitally based medium, demonstrating the technology and discussing the implications and opportunities of this dramatic change as it relates to prints. We will then spend 2 days of demonstrations and hands-on work making your prints and working them into as near perfection as we can manage. In that management is the dedication, skill, aesthetics and sensitivity that seems required to make prints of great beauty.

Learn The Possibilities

The workshop will concentrate on digital photography's possibility as a fine-arts tool using Macintosh computers, Eizo LCD displays, Adobe's Photoshop, and profiling software such as X-Rite i1Pro and Colorbyte Software's ImagePrint RIP. All necessary equipment will be provided during the workshop and will be discussed in non-technical terms. Macintosh computer experience definitely helps, but is not required. Enrollment is limited.

This is an exciting exploration of photography's powerful new digital tools with one of the most knowledgeable artists in the field.

To Register:

Credit Card Registration by phone 650 355-7507 (preferred)

Stephen Johnson

A photographer, teacher and designer, Stephen has been teaching and working in photography since 1977. His books include At Mono Lake, the critically acclaimed The Great Central Valley: California's Heartland and Making a Digital Book. He runs his own photography, publishing and design company--scanning and designing his photographic books using a Macintosh computer and since 1994 photographing in the field with digital view cameras.

Stephen's pioneering work in digital photography, desktop color separations and digital imaging has included software and product development for clients such as Apple, Adobe, Eastman Kodak, Leaf, Ricoh and SuperMac. His work with Adobe includes the creation of the duotone curves shipped with their Photoshop software.

His photographic clients have included the Ansel Adams Publishing Trust, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Friends of Photography. Johnson's photographs have been widely published and collected internationally.

In 1999, Folio Magazine declared the publication of Johnson's digital photographs in Life Magazine to be one of the Top 15 Critical Events in magazine publishing in the twentieth century. Stephen Johnson was named as a 2003 inductee into the Photoshop Hall of Fame, recognized for his achievements in Art. Canon named Steve as one of their Explorers of Light in 2006. In 2007 X-Rite named Stephen as a founding member of their exclusive Coloratti group of photographers and educators honored for their skills in color management.

Photographic clients have included the Ansel Adams Publishing Trust, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the Friends of Photography. Johnson's photographs have been widely published and collected internationally.

In 1997, Life Magazine described Stephen Johnson as an artist that "...applies science to nature and creates art." His images create "...an intimacy that brings subject and viewer close in ways conventional photographs cannot."

The Photographer’s Gallery wrote in 1998: “Stephen Johnson's photography rides on the "bleeding edge" of photography's transition to a digital media. Schooled in the traditions of fine-art western landscape photography, Johnson has taken his understanding of traditional photographic processes and brought those skills to bear on the emerging technologies and aesthetics of digital photography. He has pushed technology companies to rise to the best of what imagemaking can be, and pushed his own vision of how we see and record light in the natural world. This has led him to conclude that the way we have traditionally captured images with silver-based photography has been a poor and distortive view of the real and rich world before our eyes. His photographs look almost "unphotographic" in their clarity and purity of color. He shows us a world we know, but rarely see on paper. His is a truly remarkable vision.

Refunds and Cancellation (note changes)

This workshop is financially dependent on adequate class registration. Where minimum enrollment requirements are not met, the class will be canceled, and a full refund given. You will be notified at least one week in advance if a workshop is not going to take place. Student initiated cancellations received prior to one month before the workshop will receive credit for a future workshop of similar value, a 50% credit will be given for notice received at least 2 weeks immediately prior to the workshop (a full credit less a $50 overhead fee will be given if another student is able to fill the spot from a waiting list). No credit will be given if cancelled less than 2 weeks prior to the workshop. Credits need to be redeemed within one year.